Pho 24, Ho Chi Minh, Vietnam

I guess it certainly was befitting that my last meal in Vietnam before going off to the airport was a bowl of steaming hot pho. Having been recommended Pho 24 over Pho 2000 by some locals, we decided to give them a shot.

Pho 24 overall exudes a slightly higher level of finesse over Pho 2000. Taste wise they weren't too bad either. These cha gio (deep-fried springrolls) were crisp and filled with juicy minced pork.

The condiments for the pho are all laid out nicely on square porcelain plate.

The pho bac biet I ordered had a broth that was pretty tasty and the assortment of meats in it were quite good. In summary Pho 24 gives you a dining experience which is a tad bit more refined but with visibly smaller portions. Overall, I still think that Pho 2000 gives you better bang for your buck. It seems that when most restaurants start going "upmarket" it goes hand-in-hand with a sacrifice on the serving portions.

D

Quan An Ngon, Ho Chi Minh, Vietnam

Quan An Ngon (loosely translated as "delicious") is a pretty trendy eatary which has a dining concept that is quite unique in Vietnam. It aims to deliver street-food in a clean and comfortable dining setting. The perimeter of this predominantly open-air restaurant is lined with various stalls cooking popular Vietnamese dishes. You order from the menu and the waiter will place your orders with the various stalls and serve the food to you when it's done. It's a good place to introduce friends and guests to a wide range of Vietnamese foods under one roof and the fare here is very decent as well.

Ordered a serve of banh cuon just for comparison's sake. The one at Ben Thanh Market is still slightly better because the rice skin is softer and thinner but this one comes pretty close.

Banh Xeo is a Vietnamese savory pancake. It actually reminds me abit of thosai.

The thin crisp shell encases shrimp, minced pork and bean sprouts. This is eaten with basil leaves and a sweet fish sauce. Very tasty.

I can't remember the name of this but it uses a similar batter to the banh xeo so I'm going to call them mini banh xeos for now haha. This tastes pretty ok, it doesn't have the shrimp or minced pork like the larger banh xeo and the batter is slightly thicker making it more like a savory cake.

Bun chao tom is minced prawn meat wrapped around a sugar cane stick and grilled over a charcoal fire. It's commonly serve with these vermicelli sheets. The sweetness of the sugar cane slightly permeates the savory prawn meat making this rather delectable indeed.

Deep fried squid, this isn't really Vietnamese and comes with a very generic bottled chilli sauce but it was fried, crispy and tasty, so I still loved it anway.

Fresh springrolls eaten with a thickened sweet fish sauce with crushed nuts. A refreshing snack on a hot humid day.

Goi du du tom thit again. The raw papaya salad here tasted fresher than the one I had. A pity the serve was rather small.

The sea snails here are alot larger than the ones at the street stall but the sauce although fragrant was a tad bit too sweet for my liking.

I don't even know if this is a Vietnamese dish but I'm a sucker for grilled meats on sticks, so when I saw these pork kebabs, inevitably it appeared on my table.

Crab cooked in tamarind sauce. The crab was very fresh and the sweetness of the flesh prevailed but the sauce was ridiculously tart making this quite a waste of good crab.

The warm desserts in Vietnam seem to share some things in common, namely coconut cream and ginger. This is similar to the glutinous rice ball dessert available in Singapore but it was served with a ginger syrup and a dash of coconut cream. Ginger haters will loathe this but I actually found this rather nice.

Even the sweet soybean curd is served with ginger.

Glutinous rice and green beans served with more coconut cream and ginger syrup.

This is the taro version of this popular dessert.

I'll definitely pop by Quan An Ngon again when I'm next in Ho Chi Minh. Sure it isn't hardcore street-style dining and the prices are comparatively more dear but its convenient eating concept and the decent quality of the fare served is good enough to warrant a second trip.

D

D's breakfast in Ho Chi Minh

Nothing beats waking up to the aroma of lemon grass porkchops sizzling on a streetside charcoal grill.

The chef allowed D to have a go as well. Since I was grilling the porkchops, how could I not step into this eating house (opposite Ben Thanh Market) to sample my own efforts?

Oc nhan thit (stuffed snails) for the appetizer. These consisted of the crunchy snail flesh mixed with tender minced pork supporting a lemon grass stalk as a handle. Very aromatic and tasty.

This is bot lom, it's essentially a steamed rice cake with a topping of savory mung bean paste. It's eaten with nem (fermented raw pork sausage) and sweet fish sauce.

This is a variation of banh cuon and basically contains tom (prawn). Like the banh cuon and bot lom, it's eaten with nem and sweet fish sauce as well. Both the bot lom and the banh cuon tom are eaten as snacks or starters as well.

Goi du du tom thit or raw paw paw salad with pork and prawn. It definitely tasted different from the Thai variation but was satisfyingly tangy enough to perk up my appetite for the rest of the meal.

Banh canh is a soup dish made with prawns and crab meat. This included two huge crab claws which were already shelled, so you could hold one in your hand and eat it like a drumstick.

Whatever happened to the grilled lemon grass pork chops? Here we go, it appeared on my plate of com tam or more commonly known as "broken rice". This came with the standard pâté, pork skin and vermicelli salad, semi-cooked sunny side-up egg, pickled carrots and radish and of course a freshly charcoal grilled lemon grass pork chop. Seems quite abit for breakfast doesn't it? But it is the most important meal of the day haha!

D

Streetside Shellfish, Ho Chi Minh

Many people go to clubs for various reasons. I don't always personally agree with their reasons but I do respect that they have the right to make their own decisions. I go to clubs nowadays for primarily only one reason - supper afterwards. It'll be something like this...

Clubber: Hey D, want to go clubbing?
D: Will there be food after?
Clubber: Yeah, I guess we could do supper...
D: I see you baby, shaking that ...

And that's how I found myself at this fabulous streetside shellfish stall late one night in Ho Chi Minh.

Charcoal grilled scallops basted with spring onions in flavored olive oil? I'm sold.

The first dish that was served were the grilled scallops. Basted with the flavored oil and topped off with peanuts. This was so good that we simply had to order another serve.

Stir-fried sea snails in a coconut gravy. The gravy being coconut cream based was pretty fragrant and tasty but the snails were only pretty ok. There was a nice crunchy bit when you first suck out the contents which was quite delectable but that was followed by a slimy bit which I didn't really appreciate.

Boiled blood cockles, these are fully boiled unlike the semi-raw ones served in Singapore. Well it tasted just like any blood cockle.

Grilled giant clams, these were done in similar fashion to the scallops but the clam flesh was sliced up before it was grilled. I liked this alot as well as the flesh had a nice crunch like squid but a stronger shellfish flavor almost akin to that of abalone.

All of this was topped off with steamed clams in a local rice wine and crushed lemon grass stalks. Fresh sweet clams cooked just right, what a way to end off our barrage of shellfish. As with most seafood in Vietnam, this went very well with the lime, salt and pepper dip.

Coincidentally this placed served vit lon (duck foetus egg) as well but although this was rather tasty since it was bathed in this strong flavored sauce, it wasn't the freshest I've had.

I still prefer the ga lon (chicken fetus egg) that I had in Queensland last year. Apparently, the number of eggs you could consume was an indication of how much of a man you are or was it the more eggs eaten would make you more of the man? Nevertheless, needless to say, I had twelve in one sitting.

D

Salted Peanuts, Some Club, Ho Chi Minh

The peanuts they serve at this club are extremely salty.

I mean, look at that amount of salt! I don't know if this was a ploy to get us thirsty to order more drinks but I'm sure if I dissolved this amount of salt in water and suspend a small bit off a popsicle stick, I could start my own salt crystal farm.

D

Pho 2000, Ho Chi Minh

Pho 2000 is considered slightly above upmarket to your typical street pho stalls and has garnered some popularity in particular for one reason...

Bill Clinton had his pho here when he visited Vietnam in 2000.

I started off with a serve of bun cha gio which consists of deep-fried pork and prawn springrolls over rice vermicelli. As with most Vietnamese dishes, it's the attention given to the small details that makes that special difference, such as the scatter of crushed peanuts on this, which imparted a crunchy fragrant taste.

But I was here for the pho and this huge bowl of pho bac biet was just what the doctor ordered. Pho bac biet is literally transalated as "pho special" but it's best described as a combination beef pho. This has most of the various cuts of cow including the tripe and beef balls (i.e. processed spherical minced beef shapes not the anatomical ones). The soup here is rich and tasty and the meat servings were generous too. A squeeze of fresh lime juice, a scatter of raw bean sprouts and pho leaves makes this traditional hearty beef meal indeed one to remember.

D

Banh Cuon, Ben Thanh Market, Ho Chi Minh

The original Ben Thanh market which was located on the shores of Ben Nghe river was destroyed quite some time ago back in 1859. But fret not because the "new" Ben Thanh market is still rather old after being relocated and rebuilt in 1899! This market sells everything, from food to clothes to raw materials, spices etc but if you have to try only one food stall here (which of course you won't!), it has to be this banh cuon stall which has been passed down from the women of the family over the generations.

There are many many varieties of Vietnamese rice paper rolls and springrolls. Banh cuon is best described as a warm and soft rice flour roll filled with minced pork, mushrooms and black fungus. The skins are made fresh here as very thin layers from a rice flour mixture.

As with most Vietnamese dishes, banh cuon is eaten with a sweet and tangy fish sauce. Wouldn't that be boring you think? All the dishes with fish sauce? There are more than 100 varieties of fish sauce in Vietnamese cuisine and they taste really quite different and unique from each other.

In addition to the fish sauce it's also eaten with cha lua (Vietnamese pork sausage/ham as seen on top the banh cuon), nem (fermented raw pork sausages), cucumber slices and bean sprouts. Indeed my trip had gotten off to a good start.

D